Paul Cézanne

In the 1870s, Cezanne began depicting scenes of bathers—groups of men and women lounging, swimming, and standing in and around wooded watering holes. In this work, he focused on the figure of a single young man standing with hands on hips, one foot in front of the other, and eyes downcast. Cezanne admired classical traditions of landscape and portraiture, yet compared with the muscular bodies and idealized proportions of academic painting, this bather appears awkward—both physically ungraceful and psychologically remote. The painting’s unified palette and brushstrokes likewise defy the conventional hierarchy of figure over background: here they are almost interdependent, set apart by the distinct black outline of the bather’s body but also echoing and sometimes dissolving into one another.

The artist began his career as an Impressionist painter, and his work reflects the influence of that movement’s experiments with the optical effects of color. Cezanne, however, was not interested in color’s atmospheric properties, as the Impressionists were, but instead explored its qualities of solidity and space, trying, as he said, “to render perspective solely by means of color.” Whereas the Impressionists painted from life, Cezanne based this bather on a photograph of a man posed in a studio, transferring him in paint to an outdoor scene.

In 1921, Bliss lent this newly purchased work along with eleven others to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Loan Exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings. While the show was initially met with positive reviews, toward the end of its run a group calling itself the Committee of Citizens and Supporters of the Museum circulated a brochure to major newspapers decrying the exhibition. The pamphlet attacked modern art, labeling it a satanic cult, communist propaganda, and an example of “mental degeneracy.” It singled out Cézanne’s The Bather as “particularly disquieting” and “showing either mental or moral eclipse.” This brouhaha had the unanticipated effect of increasing attendance in the weeks before the exhibition closed.

This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.

Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Prince de Wagram (Alexandre Berthier), Paris (Mar. 21, 1906)
Ambroise Vollard, Paris (Jan. 2, 1907)
Paul Rosenberg, Paris and New York
Marius de Zayas, New York
Lillie P. Bliss, New York;
The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1934)

Per Feilchenfeldt, Walter, Jayne Warman, and David Nash. "Grand baigneur, c. 1885 (FWN 915)." The Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings of Paul Cezanne: An Online Catalogue Raisonné. https://www.cezannecatalogue.com/catalogue/entry.php?id=542 (retrieved Nov 05, 2021)

Provenance research is a work in progress, and is frequently updated with new information. If you have any questions or information to provide about the listed works, please email [email protected] or write to:

Provenance Research Project
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